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Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Painting the kitchen cabinets - part Infinity

Posting 'part x', is misleading so I'm abandoning it in favor of snark. This project will never, ever be over. I don't regret taking it on persay, but wow, it's brutal. I hate everyone on the internet that finished it in 48 hours, or even 10 days. I am largely doing it alone, but this still seems to be taking an inordinate amount of time.

Yesterday's accomplishments:

Applied primer coat 2 on the cabinet boxes.

Sanded doors and drawers

Sanded cabinet boxes (lightly with 220)

Yep, that's it. And yet I was busy for 9 solid hours JUST DOING THAT. Actually I think it's got to be longer than that, because I started around 9am, stopped for Leo's birthday dinner around 7pm, and then started again around 10pm and worked until midnight. So what's that, 12 hours? It's been like this every day. It takes between 6-7 hours just to paint the cabinet boxes.

I temporarily consoled myself by calculating how little money I'd spent (~$350) compared to what this would cost from a professional (~$1800-2200, possibly more). But then I remembered that I took a week of PTO for this project. That narrows the gap a bit, and every piddling trip to Home Depot (for the supplies I seem to be perpetually one short of) chips away at it even further. [I think I'm mixing metaphors but that's what 48 hours of primer fumes will do to your brain.]

I wish I could somehow post the entire 4-page task list that I wrote out, because it's hilarious. Here's what I'm supposed to be doing tomorrow, day 6:

Last night I lay awake in bed until 5am just freaking out. I finally made the decision that if I'm going to miss my self-imposed deadline of finishing by this Sunday, I'm going to miss it by a mile. That means I'm going back to my original plan of top cabinets being white, bottom cabinets being greige. If I'm lucky, I'll finish painting all the top cabinet boxes and doors, and the bottom boxes (only) by Sunday. Then I'll paint the bottom cabinet doors and drawers next weekend (starting Thursday evening and finishing Sunday).

Today I started at 9am, dry-wiping the cabinet doors and drawers, vacuuming off each one, then wiping them all down with a damp rag. After this lunch/coffee break I'll go back out and de-grease, and then spray coat 1 of primer on them. In an hour I'll spray the 2nd coat, and then maybe I'll actually get a coat of paint on tonight. But more likely, I predict running out of spray primer and making another trip to Home Depot. If I don't run out of primer, I predict that the Graco sprayer won't work and I'll have to buy a new one. If neither of those things happen, I predict a plague of locusts.